Eggs and Prostate Cancer: Is there a risk?

Scientists at Harvard School of Medicine, who studied the eating habits of 27,000 men over 14 years, suspect the damage is done by the cholesterol and choline in eggs.

199 of the men in the study developed lethal prostate cancer. The men ate the most eggs at were at a significantly higher risk than those who ate less eggs. No significant link was established with any other food.

Although there are potentially other lifestyle factors involved this article cautions against eating them too.

Because you were too lazy to mention the significant lifestyle factors that could have confounded the conclusion of the study, I post it here for you:

But the Prostate Charity said the men who ate the most eggs in the study were also more likely to have a poor diet, smoke, be overweight and take less exercise - all risk factors for the disease.

As for the second study, not sure I trust one study out of Argentina. Especially since we don't know the details and confounding factors either.

Unless you take the time to read the study for things like how they actually did it, what were the confounding factors, and did the study actually say what it was reported to say, its really hard to know whether its worth a darn.

As for eating just the egg whites, surely if you are capable of putting together an 80 page ebook on paleo living, you are capable of doing research and expressing an educated opinion? (although the failure to think critically through the studies you posted do suggest otherwise...)

It is an uncontrolled study. First of all, almost all SADers eating eggs eat them for breakfast. If they eat breakfast, it probably means they're carefully eating every couple hours to boost their metabolism. What do most people eat with eggs? Toast, pancakes, etc. Where do they usually eat eggs? (not at home....I could never cook something like that) McDonald's? IHOP?

Good point, its an observational study and therefore especially correlation does not necessarily equal causation...

I have trouble explaining this to people, still. "But red meat is linked to x, y and z!" Yes, because it's hard to control just red meat. People who are health conscious generally follow CW, which limits red meat, and those who aren't will eat whatever the hell they feel like.

The fact that there really aren't definitive studies analyzing paleo diets makes a lot of the choices I've made that much harder to justify. I like to tell people I probably don't have the "perfect" diet but I'm reasonably confident it's far, far better than anything traditionally recommended.

Thanks for the comments and replys. Just to clarify, I am more than capable of conducting research and have written a number of disserations, however I guess wanted to solicit opinions and share some ideas.

The key idea here I think is that correlation does not imply causation, but the study has been widely reported in the UK as a statement of definite fact by most of the daily newspapers. This must be a dangerous thing.

When looking at observational studies just skip to the suggested mechanism. Their's was cholesterol and choline, which is absolute rubbish when you consider dietary cholesterol has very little effect on humans and most people are somewhat deficient in choline (not eating enough eggs).

In the 1950's, as a very young man, I worked at a dude ranch for two summers, in Wyoming. I bunked with, ate with and worked with the wranglers (as a wrangler-in-training). These guys ate a diet that today's "modern" health-conscious adherents would call "suicidal" - bacon and eggs and biscuits with gravy for breakfast, meat for lunch, etc...plus they smoked and drank and had a wild old time at night. Maybe some of them died early, but I remember one old wrangler, almost 80 years old, who ate the cowboy diet, worked as hard as the young guys, and rolled his own cigarettes (he taught me how to roll one, which came in handy later, in the 1960's - LOL!). Anyway, the diet could probably cause the demise of a sedentary person, but these guys worked hard and that seems to be the offsetting factor.

All that notwithstanding, I can't make myself eat eggs more than 2-3 mornings a week...